"Mer tu t'en es trouble; O mer tes flots emus Semblent dire en grondant aux plus lointains rivages Que l'effroi de la terre et ton maitre n'est plus. "Tel au ciel autrefois s'envola Romulus, Tel il quitta la Terre, au milieu des orages, Tel d'un peuple guerrier il recut les homages; Obei dans sa vie, sa mort adore, Son palais fut un Temple," &c. * * * * * "We must resign! heaven his great soul does claim In storms as loud as his immortal fame; His dying groans, his last breath shakes our isle, And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile: About his palace their broad roots are tost Into the air; so Romulus was lost! New Rome in such a tempest missed her king, And from obeying fell to worshipping. On OEta's top thus Hercules lay dead, With ruined oaks and pines about him spread. Nature herself took notice of his death, And, sighing, swelled the sea with such a breath, That to remotest shores the billows rolled, Th' approaching fate of his great ruler told." WALLER. It was this elogium that gave occasion to the reply (taken notice of in Bayle's Dictionary), which Waller made to King Charles II. This king, to whom Waller had a little before (as is usual with bards and monarchs) presented a copy of verses embroidered with praises, reproached the poet for not writing with so much energy and fire as when he had applauded the Usurper (meaning Oliver). "Sir," replied Waller to the king, "we poets succeed better in fiction than in truth." This answer was not so sincere as that which a Dutch ambassador made, who, when the same monarch complained that his masters paid less regard to him than they had done to Cromwell. "Ah, sir!" says the Ambassador, "Oliver was quite another man--" It is not my intent to give a commentary on Waller's character, nor on that of any other person; for I consider men after their death in no other light than as they were writers, and wholly disregard everything else. I shall only observe that Waller, though born in a court, and to an estate of five or six thousand pounds sterling a year, was never so proud or so indolent as to lay aside the happy talent which Nature had indulged him. The Earls of Dorset and Roscommon, the two Dukes of Buckingham, the Lord Halifax, and so many other noblemen, did not think the reputation they obtained of very great poets and illustrious writers, any way derogatory to their quality. They are more glorious for their works than for their titles. These cultivated the polite arts with as much assiduity as though they had been their whole dependence. They also have made learning appear venerable in the eyes of the vulgar, who have need to be led in all things by the great; and who, nevertheless, fashion their manners less after those of the nobility (in England I mean) than in any other country in the world. LETTER XXII.--ON MR. POPE AND SOME OTHER FAMOUS POETS